Themes usability and maintenance (Was: [drupal-devel] Integrating Drupal with phpBB)

[Kobus Myburgh]

Wouldn't it be just as much work to build those features that you
want into drupal core and forum.module. the 4.3 forum.module is
much more css friendly so interesting designs are possible. it is
too bad we ship with one, straightforward design.

Which brings another thought back to the front - there were discussions
whether to (get rid of all the themes and?) bring out only one theme
(XTemplate?) with different CSS styling to suit different needs. With
everything being very CSS friendly nowadays, isn't it something that
should be considered?

I believe that this would have more pros than cons:

cons:
* Possibly killing imagination in creating themes
* more...?

pros:
* Easier to maintain
* Quicker to come up with "new designs"
* Need only to know a bit of CSS to come up with a great theme
* Standardizing on set technologies for core themes (i.e. only
XHTML/CSS/WHATEVER as opposed to a lot of diverging techs)
* Easier to set up a showcase for Drupal's theming capabilities
* more...?

Thoughts about this?

Regards,

Kobus

[Charlie Lowe]

Post by Kobus Myburgh
Which brings another thought back to the front - there were discussions
whether to (get rid of all the themes and?) bring out only one theme
(XTemplate?) with different CSS styling to suit different needs. With
everything being very CSS friendly nowadays, isn't it something that
should be considered?
* Quicker to come up with "new designs"

+1
With 4.2, I began using XTemplate as the base for all my theme design. A
half a dozen themes later, now that I'm comfortable with all of the
nuances of XTemplate, design is easier than it was when building themes
for Drupal 4.1. In fact, I had helped someone with creating a modified
version of Interlaced for a Drupal 4.1 site. When upgrading their site
to 4.2, I ended up modifying XTemplate to achieve the same look rather
than making changes to their Interlace theme. Wasn't that much more work
now that I've gotten used to the various CSS classes. And potentially, I
felt it would be easier for the site owner should then decide they want
to start modifying their theme.

Charlie
http://cyberdash.com/

[Adrian Simmons]

Post by Kobus Myburgh
(get rid of all the themes and?) bring out only one theme
(XTemplate?) with different CSS styling to suit different needs.

Well, I'd hate to see all themes disappear except xtemplate, but it
would seem reasonable that only one serious theme should remain in the
core, with perhaps an enhanced Sample theme too. As you suggest, you'd
need to ship several different stylesheets with xtemplate.

Post by Kobus Myburgh
* Quicker to come up with "new designs"

Well, these are new 'looks'. New skins if you like, the skeleton remains
the same. CSS allows you to make major, but none the less purely
superfical changes.
To get a truly different design requires getting into the php and
xtemplate.

Post by Kobus Myburgh
* Need only to know a bit of CSS to come up with a great theme

No, a great *style*, a great *skin*, a great *look*, call it what you
will, coming up with great themes will still need php, logic and xhtml
changes.

Post by Kobus Myburgh
* Standardizing on set technologies for core themes (i.e. only
XHTML/CSS/WHATEVER as opposed to a lot of diverging techs)

I'm not sure quite what you mean. The core, surely, is php/xhtml/css, if
people like using different template engines they will. But currently
there's what? Xtemplate and smarty? Hardly a major divergence.

Post by Kobus Myburgh
* Easier to set up a showcase for Drupal's theming capabilities

It's true that xtemplate could do with a few different stylesheets,
preferably selectable using a menu rather than typing in a url, and that
these need to be shipped with the core.

Following that thread about template engines
<http://drupal.org/book/view/871>, it seems to me that xtemplate just
gets in the way. Without it you need to know php/xhtml/css to make truly
original themes, with it you also need to know xtemplate - it's a
barrier. I'm drifting off the point, sorry.

You'll never get a single theme that suits the needs of everyone. You
could categorize people into two groups:

Group 1: those that want an easy to use option, with lots of settings in
the theme admin, including several different stylesheets to choose from.

Group 2: those that want a platform for the creation of their own unique
themes, including the ability to radically alter page structure as well
as the look.

Thus as I see it you need two core themes, one for each of these groups,
the Group two theme doesn't have to look like much but would need to be
heavily documented and commented. The current sample theme is poor in
this regard.

Xtemplate does form the basis of a theme that might work for group one,
but it'll need people with the skillset of group 2 to take it there -
unfortunately the need to learn xtemplate probably discourages a lot of
people from contributing that otherwise might.

Adrian

[Adriaan Rossouw]

Post by Kobus Myburgh
Which brings another thought back to the front - there were discussions
whether to (get rid of all the themes and?) bring out only one theme
(XTemplate?) with different CSS styling to suit different needs. With
everything being very CSS friendly nowadays, isn't it something that
should be considered?

I dont think that was ever the choice.

We were just talking about creating a single theme with the ability to use
multiple templates/stylesheets for each template.

Post by Kobus Myburgh
* Possibly killing imagination in creating themes

http://www.csszengarden.com

table based layouts kill imagination more in my opinion.

if you really need to .. you can write your own template for xtemplate that does
what you want (table based layouts are really not the best solution though..
but you are still free to make them.
--
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Web Application Developer | Icq : 735289
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[jonathan c. tobin]

Post by Adriaan Rossouw

Post by Kobus Myburgh
Which brings another thought back to the front - there were discussions
whether to (get rid of all the themes and?) bring out only one theme
(XTemplate?) with different CSS styling to suit different needs. With
everything being very CSS friendly nowadays, isn't it something that
should be considered?
* Possibly killing imagination in creating themes

http://www.csszengarden.com
table based layouts kill imagination more in my opinion.
if you really need to .. you can write your own template for xtemplate
that does what you want (table based layouts are really not the best
solution though.. but you are still free to make them.

I am fully in support of CSS based themes in favor of table-based. There
are many sites expounding upon the reasons for CSS being used in
preference of tables, so I won't necessarily go into that.

However, what I will say is that upon installing any software package
such as Drupal, osCommerece, etc, one of the first things I do to
customize is develop a CSS-based theme. It makes all future
modifications less frustrating and provides me with more flexibility.

I will most likely be posting a generic CSS layout to the drupal site
this week, nothing special, but a good framework for further development.

Tables are good for displaying matrices of data, and never intended for
layout or pagewide presentation.


jonathan c. tobin, designer/developer
silentweaponry <http://www.silentweaponry.com>, los angeles
***@silentweaponry.com <mailto:%***@silentweaponry.com>
<mailto:***@badzen.com>